The other day I was on a train, reading a book. The young woman seated next to me was also reading a book. We were both enjoying classics of English literature – hers was a Charlotte Brontë novel. The only difference was that my book was made of paper, and hers of light on the screen of an e-reader.

Books are changing; but are the fundamentals of reading and writing? Seeing a reader gripped by digital Brontë made me aware that electronic books are giving literacy a new dimension. Many people like this new way of enjoying a book, and some may prefer it. Look at it this way: since the 1960s when transistor radios and – by the end of the decade – colour televisions transformed popular culture, every new technological gimmick has strengthened the appeal of the sort of media that rivals the book. Music and film, TV and video games: all have outshone books in technological glamour. Now, suddenly, here is a techie way to read a book. It's kind of cool.

I don't believe this technology will destroy the printed object; real books will never lose their charm. But Luddites who see today's new ways of reading as an assault are fantasising. Literacy has been under attack for decades, from all directions. Reading suffered its worst assault, perhaps, from television. My nain (my Welsh grandmother) used to read all the time – in fact she was the village librarian – but you wouldn't find many people in that same village today with the TV off, their heads in books. It is therefore surely arguable that e-readers are not the destroyers but the saviours of the book. A generation may return to the written word because of this technology.

But even if we agree that ebooks add a new, interesting sheen to literacy, what about the writer? Damaging publishers' returns and reducing authors to penury will surely wreck literature? But once again, this is false nostalgia, based on the absurd proposition that writing was ever a secure, easy, practical way to make a living. How many authors make any decent money?

The careers advice I was given in the 1980s was that journalism – not even "creative writing", journalism – was a foolhardy career choice. The chances of making a decent living as a newspaper writer were remote; better to go in for law … But young people did try to be journalists then, and they do now, and some of them go even further and become novelists and poets. What poet ever did it for the money?

The wealthiest writers are rarely the best. The poorest writers may pen undying words. That is an ancient truism, and to hear people complain about the writer's lot today is unseemly. If you go into writing – and I include criticism here – as a cosy career choice, you are misguided. Writers deserve to be paid. It is work. But it has never been easy work to do, or to get paid for. There were garrets a long time before the Kindle came along.